Satellite-based earth-observation systems crucial in adapting to climate change

In October, as part of the Climate Resilience project, GMV visited three Multilateral Development Banks (MDB): the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Climate Resilience Cluster project, led by GMV, forms part of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD) initiative. This project aims to demonstrate to International Financial Institutes (IFIs) the benefits of satellite-based earth observation systems in establishing effective strategies for boosting developing countries’ climate-change resilience.

The project consortium is made up by various benchmark European organizations in diverse fields of specialization: climatology, earth observation, data-visualization and -processing software, teaching, climate services, etc.

Every year the development banks back thousands of projects in countries that have little access otherwise to private financing outlets. Part of this input of funds and technical advice goes towards adapting the country’s critical infrastructure against climate change, i.e., reducing the potential damage of climate change.

The project, working in alliance with the IBDs’ main actors, will generate a series of use cases that provide the Banks with key geospatial information. This will improve their decision-making procedures in terms of increasing the climate-change resilience of the country’s population and its most vulnerable and damage-prone sectors. The final goal is to increase the uptake of earth-observation data in IFI’s decision-making procedures.

The visit to these three banks gave the consortium first-hand knowledge of these institutions’ needs and regions of interest. This will then allow them to draw up a climate-services portfolio that favors a practical assessment of the usefulness of earth observation data.